Worldwild

Pterodactyl play a familiar brand of exuberant, sunburned psychedelic-inspired indie-- not too far off from labelmates Oneida.

Pterodactyl play a familiar brand of exuberant, sunburned psychedelic-inspired indie-- not too far off from Oneida, the godfathers of the Brah label which is now releasing the band's second album. Their debut was contagiously manic while being simply, satisfyingly melodic; Worldwild sticks to the same basic sound, but offers grander gestures and a more layered listen. If the album has a loose theme, it hovers around the search for a spiritual bond with the planet, with lyrics about waterfalls and ambling journeys into the woods. A lot of Worldwild has the band honing its normally loud, boisterous elements into mimicking nature, like the tribal rhythm and singsong chant of "February" or the cascading melody and layers of "Old Clouds".

Despite the healthy amount of noise the band can work up, headphone listening reveals ambitious touches like the high-pitched harmonies hovering over lurching, stop-start rhythms in "Rising & Shining" and "First Daze".The record's best tracks such as "Share the Shade" fold the mania of earlier Pterodactyl songs like "Polio" into something that barrels through a few hairpin turns instead of remaining straightforward, while the rhythm section keeps its tectonic rumble at top speed. Drummer Matt Marlin has always been the band's not-so-secret weapon, so it's a surprise that one of the album's most affecting songs begins without any percussion at all: The vocal in "December" offers breathless narration over a plaintive morse-code pulse of guitar, providing one of the record's most sparse and gorgeous moment

Much of Worldwild either drifts or holds back; even its more immediate songs seem wary of being too melodically obvious or offering too much catharsis at once. On their debut, Pterodactyl were figuring out who they were as a band, but the inertia of their songs ably distracted from the record's seams. Here, there's some familiar patterns, but between breaks for acoustic primitivism and sound-collage interludes, they still seem to be figuring things out-- all while trying to put together a more cohesive album. While the highlights like "Share the Sound" or "No Sugar" refine the band's sound into something more sophisticated yet brawny, their attempts to make all of it congeal into a whole is what feels forced. It's not that the band shouldn't be ambitious, or that putting together a more coherent end-to-end listening experience is a bad thing. But Worldwild is just their second album; did they have to grow up so fast?